Becoming Animal

– curated by Borbála Soós

Petra Feriancová & Nicolás Lamas

16 May until 30 June 2018

"...each multiplicity is already composed of heterogeneous terms in symbiosis, and that a multiplicity is continually transforming itself into a string of other multiplicities, according to its thresholds and doors. For example, the Wolf-Man's pack of wolves also becomes a swarm of bees, and a field of anuses, and a collection of small holes and tiny ulcerations (the theme of contagion): all these heterogeneous elements compose "the" multiplicity of symbiosis and becoming."(1)

These two interrelated solo exhibition look at our current times as a moment when complex systems and ecologies are more and more vulnerable, and in fact quickly falling apart. They consider instances of accelerated entropy as moments when transformations happen. While the decaying structures bring with them dangers and unpredictability, they also provide many opportunities for other beings to more intensely interact with each other. It is a period when becoming gains importance also as a radical way of caring for each other and surviving in new forms. This is under the understanding that we are all connected, in fact, made of the same. Our bodies are the site of nature in the past present and the future, full of histories of cross-contamination and symbiotic relations. We consist of many different beings for which we continually provide as hosts, moreover transform ourselves into each other. If evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation…(2). On the far side, we find becoming -elementary, -cellular, -molecular, and even becoming-imperceptible…(3)

Becoming can entail mimicry, taking on certain characteristics or dissolving our boundaries in the desire to be one with, assimilated into the surroundings. Ultimately however, becoming is as much about a way of seeing (point of view) as being seen. Instead of imitating a form of an animal, one has to embody a way of its existence, including speed, capacities, powers and relationality. Becoming is a matter of unlearning physical and emotional habits and learning to take on new ones that enlarge the scope of one’s relationship and responses to the world.(4)

Petra Feriancová (b 1977 Bratislava, Slovakia) lives and works in Bratislava, SK and Milan, IT. She was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, SK, which she left for the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Roma, IT, graduating in 2003. She holds a PhD since 2016 from the Department of Intermedia and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, SK.

In 2013, she represented Slovakia and the Czech Republic at the 55th Biennial of Venice with the project titled An Order of Things. In 2011 she was a resident at ISCP, New York, US, and in 2010, she was awarded the Oskar Cepan Prize for young visual artists organised by the FCS Foundation for a Civil Society.